Dressing by Degrees: Academic Dress in British Columbia 1866–1966

Introduction: Before leaving his quarters at Fort Victoria in the recently established Colony of Vancouver Island on Sunday 18 March 1849, the Revd Robert John Staines took clerical vesture from his trunk. Yesterday, after a six-month journey from England, he came ashore from the Hudson’s Bay Company barque Columbia. Today his Sunday duties as Company Chaplain and Schoolmaster begin with the conduct of Divine Service. For his ministrations, he likely donned Anglican choir dress: cassock, surplice, scarf and his Cambridge BA hood

A Trip to the Moon: Personalized Animated Movies for Self-reflection

Self-tracking physiological and psychological data poses the challenge of presentation and interpretation. Insightful narratives for self-tracking data can motivate the user towards constructive self-reflection. One powerful form of narrative that engages audience across various culture and age groups is animated movies. We collected a week of self-reported mood and behavior data from each user and created in Unity a personalized animation based on their data. We evaluated the impact of their video in a randomized control trial with a non-personalized animated video as control. We found that personalized videos tend to be more emotionally engaging, encouraging greater and lengthier writing that indicated self-reflection about moods and behaviors, compared to non-personalized control videos

Art into Landscape

As citizens we are all concerned with the environment in which we live and most of us believe that if we were given an opportunity we could do something to improve it. It is a minority of designers and architects who influence large-scale environmental design, while we have to be content to indulge our aesthetic instinct by choosing the furniture and furnishings in our homes and in planning, on a much smaller scale, our gardens. The intention of this Art into Landscape competition, however, was to give everyone an opportunity to make a contribution to a number of proposed projects by inviting interested designers - both professional and laymen - to suggest ways in which open spaces might be developed for public use and pleasure. Competitors had a choice of twelve sites (see the current situation regarding realisation of schemes, for a complete list) from all over the country, where local authorities were eager to extend an enthusiastic welcome to incentive schemes. Each competitor was notified of the target costs within which he had to work, and a brief was prepared for him to follow

Project schedule optimisation utilising genetic algorithms

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis extends the body of research into the application of Genetic Algorithms to the Project Scheduling Problem (PSP). A thorough literature review is conducted in this area as well as in the application of other similar meta-heuristics. The review extends previous similar reviews to include PSP utilizing the Design Structure Matrix (DSM), as well as incorporating recent developments. There is a need within industry for optimisation algorithms that can assist in the identification of optimal schedules when presented with a network that can present a number of possible alternatives. The optimisation requirement may be subtle only performing slight resource levelling or more profound by selecting an optimal mode of execution for a number of activities or evaluating a number of alternative strategies. This research proposes a unique, efficient algorithm using adaptation based on the fitness improvement over successive generations. The algorithm is tested initially using a MATLAB based implementation to solve instances of the travelling salesman problem (TSP). The algorithm is then further developed both within MATLAB and Microsoft Project Visual Basic to optimise both known versions of the Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problems as well as investigating newly defined variants of the problem class

Outer-Sphere Effects on Reduction Potentials of Copper Sites in Proteins: The Curious Case of High Potential Type 2 C112D/M121E Pseudomonas aeruginosa Azurin

Redox and spectroscopic (electronic absorption, multifrequency electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and X-ray absorption) properties together with X-ray crystal structures are reported for the type 2 Cu^(II) C112D/M121E variant of Pseudomonas aeruginosa azurin. The results suggest that Cu^(II) is constrained from interaction with the proximal glutamate; this structural frustration implies a “rack” mechanism for the 290 mV (vs NHE) reduction potential measured at neutral pH. At high pH (~9), hydrogen bonding in the outer coordination sphere is perturbed to allow axial glutamate ligation to Cu^(II), with a decrease in potential to 119 mV. These results highlight the role played by outer-sphere interactions, and the structural constraints they impose, in determining the redox behavior of transition metal protein cofactors

High-Potential C112D/M121X (X = M, E, H, L) Pseudomonas aeruginosa Azurins

Site-directed mutagenesis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa azurin C112D at the M121 position has afforded a series of proteins with elevated Cu^(II/I) reduction potentials relative to the CuII aquo ion. The high potential and low axial hyperfine splitting (Cu^(II) electron paramagnetic resonance A|) of the C112D/M121L protein are remarkably similar to features normally associated with type 1 copper centers